Recap
The 2000–01 NBA season was the 55th season of the National Basketball Association. The season ended with the Los Angeles Lakers winning their second straight championship, beating the Philadelphia 76ers 4 games to 1 in the 2001 NBA Finals.
* The Grizzlies play their final season in Vancouver, British Columbia before relocating to Memphis, Tennessee for the following season leaving the Toronto Raptors as the only Canadian team left in the NBA.
* Rick Pitino resigned as head coach and president of the Boston Celtics, ending a three-plus-year tenure filled with turmoil, disappointment and three consecutive below .500, non-playoff seasons.
* The Dallas Mavericks played their final season at Reunion Arena. They also made the playoffs for the first time since the 1989–90 season. They also made it past the first round for the first time since the 1987–88 season.
* The Los Angeles Lakers win their second straight title by going 15–1 in the playoffs, then the best playoff winning percentage in NBA history (later surpassed by the 2017 Golden State Warriors).
* The Toronto Raptors made the second round of the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, winning over New York 3–2. They lost in the second round to Philadelphia 4–3.
* Prior to the season, Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning announced that he suffered a kidney disorder and missed the first five months of the season. Mourning would receive a kidney transplant two years later.
* To date, this was the last time a team with the best regular season record did not win 60 or more games in a full 82-game season. Though the 2011–12 Chicago Bulls and the 2011–12 San Antonio Spurs each won 50 games and the top conference seeds, they did so during a 66-game lockout-shortened regular season.
* Effective of this season, the league now permitted players to wear knee-length shorts by default, although players like John Stockton opted to continue wearing short shorts during the season. This would be the case for other players in the future as players like Chris Douglas-Roberts in the 2014–15 season and LeBron James for some of the 2015–16 season would opt to wear short shorts.
* Three teams in the Western Conference who missed the playoffs won 40 or more games. The ninth-placed Houston Rockets finished the season with a 45–37 record, the tenth-placed Seattle SuperSonics finished with a 44–38 record, and the eleventh-placed Denver Nuggets ended the season with a 40–42 record.
